A little over a full year after I moved my site to Jekyll, I am now moving it to Hexo! I'm currently using the Chan template, but I swear I'm not a weeb; it’s just very aesthetically pleasing.
Hexo operates in a very similar fashion to Jekyll, except the former relies on Node.js whereas the latter uses Ruby. This alone wasn’t the sole reason for the switch, although I'll admit I do use Node and Javascript far more in my personal development processes than I do Ruby (which I admittedly barely use at all). The first motivation for the switch was simply a desire for change. I have a tendency to like variety and experimentation, so I partially just felt like it was time to try a different means of website creation. This lead to the second motivation, which was that Jeykll’s development and community appears to have slowed quite a bit since I first started using it. As I looked for a new Jekyll theme, I kept seeing the same ones I'd found over a year ago popping up. It doesn’t look like the ecosystem has changed much, which to some may be fine as it suggests a certain level of stability, but to me it lacks a certain amount of growth and excitement that I often find myself desiring. Finally, Hexo’s development process just feels much more fluid than Jekyll’s. Obviously this is entirely personal preference, but the command line tools and even the directory structure of Hexo is incredibly easy to use and very fast to iterate with. All of these things made Hexo a very tempting choice, and ultimately lead to this switch.
So what does this mean for the future? Well… I don’t really know. I keep meaning to write more blog posts, but I have yet to get around to it. Will this be the year I finally start actively participating on my website? Perhaps, but only time will tell.